Handwriting recognition software has made it possible to digitally capture handwriting and transform it into digital characters using an input capture device and a computer. The capture device may be a flat panel device that allows a user to enter normal handwritten scribbles onto a piece of paper attached to the capture device while information about the coordinates of the pen strokes is digitally recorded by the capture device. The capture device can later upload the digitally recorded handwritten scribbles into a computer where an uploading program receives and stores the handwriting scribbles in memory, resulting in two copies of a document, namely the original handwritten version and a second, digitally encoded version.
The capture device can digitally collect multiple pages of handwritten scribbles at a time, just as traditional paper notepads do. In order to logically store the captured scribbles as multiple digital pages, the capture device must be informed when a new page is being written on. To accomplish this, the capture device generally has a navigation button thereon that the user presses when beginning a new page.
Digital handwriting capture is useful when data must be entered into a computer program for later processing, but original handwritten copies must be retained for legal or verification purposes. In these instances, it would be helpful to have handwriting automatically transformed into digital characters and transferred to a computer program without manual data entry. This may be achieved by placing a printed paper form with clearly defined input fields on a capture device, digitally capturing the handwritten scribbles, e.g., drawings and text characters, in these input fields on the capture device, and uploading the digital scribbles to the computer. A recognition program may then interpret the digitally recorded handwritten scribbles in these input fields and transform them into a digitally encoded representation, which can be automatically entered into the computer program in the same manner as if the scribbles were manually entered via a keyboard.
An exemplary application for digital handwriting capture is a questionnaire. A typical questionnaire is a printed paper form containing a collection of questions and a set of answers from which to choose for each question. Each answer has a check box next to it. A printed questionnaire may be attached to the device and the device pen used to check a chosen answer for each question in the questionnaire. As each question is answered, the capture device digitally captures the pen strokes. The format of the captured pen strokes may be a time-ordered sequence of (x,y) coordinates, a sequence of vector coordinates (x,y,t), or any other format capable of indicating when and where on the capture device pen strokes were made.
When the user repeats the questionnaire several times, for example, when surveying the public at a mall, the user may store the multiple questionnaire answers in the capture device without having to upload between questionnaires. After completing one questionnaire, the user presses the navigation button on the capture device to indicate the ending of that questionnaire and the start of a new one. The user then attaches the next questionnaire to the capture device and begins again. When completely done, the user has both the sets of printed questionnaires and the paginated digital capture data. The user may then upload all the data to the computer for later processing, avoiding manual data entry.
Similarly, when the questionnaire is more than one page long, after completing each page and prior to beginning the next one, the user presses the navigation button on the capture device.
However, the problem is that the user often forgets to press the navigation button. When this happens, the user's scribbles from multiple pages are merged into one digital page of capture data, resulting in indecipherable and unusable questionnaire data.
Some systems have tried to solve this problem by providing a page number field at the top of the questionnaire for the user to write in the page number. The problem with this approach is that the user often forgets to write in the page number or writes in the wrong page number. And, even when the user correctly writes in the page number, the computer handwriting recognition program sometimes fails to correctly recognize the number.
Other systems have tried to solve this problem by providing graphical user interfaces to display the questionnaires. A new questionnaire is displayed only after the user submits the current questionnaire data, at which time the page number is automatically recorded. However, in these systems, a more complex input/output device than the capture device must be used to display the graphical user interfaces. Such a device could be expensive and too bulky to carry, particularly for field surveys, field inventory, etc., for which the capture device is ideally suited.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a simple and transparent way to identify multiple questionnaire pages without relying on the user to do so.